"All this region is very level and full of forests, vines and butternut trees. No Christian has ever visited this land and we had all the misery of the world trying to paddle the river upstream." Samuel de Champlain

Monday, October 26, 2015

Encana strategy: deny, delay, deter and deflect

"(Jessica) Ernst kept tabs on the denials in Colorado, and she also learned that Encana didn't treat the Canadian military any better than it did landowners with contaminated water. The company applied to puncture and frack shallow rock under a national wildlife reserve on the Suffield military base in southern Alberta, and during federal public hearings on the controversial application, a cache of emails revealed a history of bitter disputes between Encana and military commanders over the company's chronic noncompliance record. In one 2005 memo, former base commander Dan Drew complained that Encana had a singular strategy when it came to breaking the rules: "to deny, delay, deter and deflect." Drew later told Edmonton Journal reporter Ed Struzik that he'd rather be hunting down the Taliban in Afghanistan with his son than dealing with Encana on oil and gas issues. Ernst had a good idea what he meant."

I'm the second generation of my family that lives in Richelieu, Quebec, in Canada. My family tree, both from my mother's and my father's side, has its roots in Quebec since the beginning of the 1600s: my ancestors crossed the ocean from France, leaving Perche and Normandy behind them. Both French AND English are my mother tongues: I learned to talk in both languages when I was a baby, and both my parents were perfectly bilingual too.